Japanese Students Turn To Nintendo To Learn English

Nintendo has become the latest tool in English instruction at Tokyo’s 100-year-old Joshi Gakuen school in Japan.  The handheld DS consoles can be seen everywhere, with its accompanying textbook software used in weekly sessions that focus on audio comprehension, penmanship and vocabulary.

After years of games such as Super Mario being banned on campus, students were surprised to see the Nintendo.

"They’ve been using it at home playing games, so at first they were surprised they can use it at school," Motoko Okubo, a junior high school teacher at the school, told Reuters.  Okubo uses Nintendo in weekly sessions that began in May.

Although the school is just beginning its one-year free trial period, vice principal Junko Tatsumi said the results so far have been promising.

"The students are really concentrating and have fun in gaining skills such as spelling," she told Reuters.

"Our school policy is English education should be fun," Tatsumi said.

Japan has long struggled with English language instruction.  The nation has approximately 15,000 middle and high schools, and began reform initiatives to create a more "relaxed" environment in 2000 aimed at encouraging creativity and reducing learning by memorization.

Nintendo was not initially seen as part of the reforms, and is rarely found at most schools after an OECD educational survey of 57 nations last December found Japanese 15-year-olds falling in rankings for mathematics, science and reading.

But Japan’s education ministry delegates decisions on teaching tools to the schools.  First-year student Kanako Takahashi said using the Nintendo DS as an English-language learning tool would be a “no-brainer”.

"It’s fun and helps me remember English," the 13-year old told Reuters.

"There’s also math software that would be great to try."

For now, it’s only used to teach English at Takahashi’s all-girls school, but other schools around the country use the DS for math and Japanese instruction. 

Nintendo says the number of Japanese schools with its consoles is still small, but its touch screen and wide variety of games, including 200 licensed education titles, is generating increasing revenue as more women and older consumers give the DS a try.   Indeed, worldwide sales of DS since its 2004 launch are in excess of 70 million units. 

But even at Joshi Gakuen, not all the faculty approves of the Nintendo’s use.

"I had been using it myself, so I wasn’t uncomfortable, but other teachers who had never used the DS were a little bit worried because it’s a game," said Okubo.

But vice principal Tatsumi says the guidelines are clear.

"No unessential item is allowed at school," said Tatsumi, adding mobile phones and playing cards to the list of things the school prohibits.

"When English class ends, students cannot play DS games outside and all consoles and software are collected."

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